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Taxi Driver: The GameSource: IGNFrom gritty slice of 70s art film zeitgeist to a controller in your hand.by David Adams

May 11, 2005 - With The Godfather and Scarface already set for video game treatment, perhaps it was inevitable that someone would do the same for another landmark in unflinching American film, Taxi Driver. Majesco announced today that the famous 1976 film, which starred Robert De Niro in the iconic role of unstable cabbie Travis Bickle, will be the basis for a new game set for release in spring 2006.

The Taxi Driver game is in development at Papaya Studio. While Majesco is not yet announcing game details or specific platforms, the company confirmed with IGN that Taxi Driver is not slated for next-generation systems.

The original Martin Scorcese film, which also featured Jodie Foster, Harvey Keitel, and Cybill Shephard, among others, is as loved as it is notorious for its disturbing story of violence and perversity -- not to mention psychotic alienation. Majesco intends to celebrate the film's 30th anniversary with the game release.

"We look forward to developing a game that remains true to the spirit and style of the movie, and embodies a total entertainment experience," comment Majesco's Ken Gold.

"We're excited to be working with Majesco on a game for Taxi Driver," said Mark Caplan at Sony Pictures Consumer Products. "We're confident they, together with Papaya Studio, will create a game that successfully makes the transition from film to the video game world."

Expect to hear plenty more on the Taxi Driver in the coming months. (And if Five Easy Pieces or One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest ever become games, we'll let you know, too.)

'I was in a bad place' Paul Schrader was 26 and destitute when he wrote Taxi Driver. As the film is re-released, he tells Geoffrey Macnab why he's still proud of his violent movie - and why he lied about it to the FBI Source: The Guardian UK

Seemingly against his wishes, the American writer and director Paul Schrader is in town to edit his latest feature, The Walker. The film was largely financed with British money, and so Schrader is obliged to complete post-production in the UK. On one level, however, the timing is fortuitous: Schrader will be in town for next week's 30th anniversary re-release of Taxi Driver, the film he scripted for Martin Scorsese and which made both their names.

Schrader, who is 59 and grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan, has a reputation as an intense and driven figure. But on the evening I meet him, he is in a surprisingly relaxed groove. Not even the prospect of a new computer game based on Taxi Driver seems to upset him. After Sony announced plans for "a total entertainment experience", he and Scorsese scrambled unsuccessfully to have the project stopped in its tracks.

But when they went back to their original contracts, Schrader discovered they had sold "all their rights to all media, known and unknown, now and in the future". That was their Faustian bargain to get the movie made.

Talking to Schrader about the origins of Taxi Driver is a disarming experience. On the one hand, he waxes nostalgic about a movie he is still clearly immensely proud of. On the other, he is forcing himself to rake over one of the most troubled moments in his own life. Schrader used to say "Travis Bickle is me", an unlikely claim, given that at the time he wrote the screenplay, he was a budding writer, protege of New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael, and a cinephile with a passion for Robert Bresson. (Travis, by contrast, was an alienated out-of-towner whose movie tastes inclined only as far as Times Square porno flicks.)

"At the time I wrote it [Taxi Driver], I was in a rather low and bad place," Schrader says. "I had broken with Pauline [Kael], I had broken with my wife, I had broken with the woman I left my wife for, I had broken with the American Film Institute and I was in debt." For several weeks, he drifted around LA, living and sleeping in his car, eating junk food, watching porn. Eventually, when his stomach began to hurt badly, he went to the hospital and discovered he had an ulcer.

"When I was talking to the nurse, I realised I hadn't spoken to anyone in weeks ... that was when the metaphor of the taxi cab occurred to me. That is what I was: this person in an iron box, a coffin, floating round the city, but seemingly alone." He claims he wrote the script, which he dashed off in under a fortnight, as self-therapy, to "exorcise the evil I felt within me".

Taxi Driver was set in New York, but this wasn't a city Schrader knew especially well. His screenplay was riddled with geographical errors. When they were preparing to shoot, Scorsese used to make sardonic remarks to him: "Sixth Avenue doesn't run downtown. What are you going to do? Have them change the traffic?"

But whatever their reservations about his street knowledge, Scorsese and De Niro were entirely in synch with Schrader as to who Travis Bickle was. They didn't spend long hours discussing Travis's motivations. Schrader simply gave De Niro his jacket and boots and left him to get on with it.

Taxi Driver was released in the US in February 1976. Three months later, Schrader accompanied the movie to Cannes, stopping en route in Paris to interview his idol Robert Bresson. "He asked me, 'Do you think your film will win the big prize?' I said, 'Yes.'" Schrader was right, and Taxi Driver went on to win the Palme d'Or despite jury president Tennessee Williams's reported revulsion at its violence.

Schrader tells a lovely story about an evening he spent in Cannes. He and Scorsese were having drinks on a hotel terrace, winding down at the the end of the day. "I was there with Marty and [Francis Ford] Coppola. Then Fassbinder came by with somebody. Then Sergio Leone came by. I remember thinking, wow! This is the fucking greatest thing I've ever been at in my life. Here I am with all these movie gods, sitting on the terrace discussing movies in the middle of the night in the Mediterranean."

Ask him today if he or Scorsese feel any responsibility for the toxic effect Taxi Driver subsequently had on its youthful star Jodie Foster, who was nominated for an Oscar for her portrayal of 12-year-old prostitute Iris, and he strikes an evasive note. On March 30 1981, John Hinckley Jr, who had become obsessed with the film and had been stalking Foster, attempted to assassinate US president Ronald Reagan in a bid to impress her; in some subliminal way it was as if the US public and media blamed her for it. "She [Foster] was a strong girl. She refused to do interviews about the film for a long time, which was smart," he says, and then changes the subject.

The day Reagan was shot, Schrader, Scorsese and De Niro were questioned by the FBI. "I was scouting locations in New Orleans. It came over the radio that a white kid from Colorado had made the assassination attempt. I said to the driver, it was one of those Taxi Driver kids."

By the time he got back to his hotel, the FBI were waiting. "I've got a lot of respect for the FBI that day because they were really on it." They wanted to know whether Schrader had had contact with Hinckley. "They said, 'Have you heard from him, and if you have, have you heard any other names from him?'"

Schrader now admits that he lied to the Feds. His office had received one or two letters from "this kid in Colorado who wanted to know how he could meet Jodie Foster". He told the secretary to throw the letters out. "I knew that if I told the FBI, 'Yeah, I got a letter from him [Hinckley] once but I threw it out,' I would be fucked, my secretary would be fucked. We'd have to be endlessly answering questions about a letter we've thrown out and don't remember. So I just said, 'No, I have never heard of him.'"

Contrary to internet rumours, there are no plans for a Taxi Driver sequel. Arguably, Scorsese and Schrader have already made it, with Bringing Out the Dead (1999), about an ambulance driver in New York - although Schrader felt the film went awry when Nicolas Cage was cast in the lead instead of his preferred choice, Ed Norton.

The writer acknowledges that Taxi Driver is "a young man's film" and could even be considered juvenilia. Its racial politics in particular remain problematic. In his original screenplay, the pimp (eventually played by Harvey Keitel) was black and in the final reel shoot-out, Travis killed only black people. "In the original script, it was just a racist slaughter," Schrader remembers. "There was genuine concern. [The producers] came to me and said, 'We've really got to change this. There could be a riot.' It would have been socially and morally irresponsible if we had incited that kind of violence."

Schrader points out that there is a difference between making a film about a racist and making a racist movie. He also dismisses the idea that Taxi Driver is pro-vigilante or - as some have called it - a fascist parable. Nor is Travis' sexuality as straightforward as it may have appeared. There is, Schrader contests, a strong homoerotic element to the storytelling. "If you look at this character, in this film I've just finished (The Walker), he is now gay. From Taxi Driver to American Gigolo to Light Sleeper, he has been working his way there. I've finally got him out of the closet!"

He has at least partly renounced "the new brutalist" side of the movies he made in the 1970s. "I killed more screen characters in the first four films I wrote than I have since," he says. "I realised I had to stop writing violence." His next film is "about a man who once was a dog who meets a dog who once was a boy," he explains to my bafflement.

Schrader is a very different personality and film-maker to the 26-year-old who wrote Taxi Driver, but his continuing pride in the movie is self-evident. "The film holds up because it is true. It is true to who we were," he says. "The reason it holds up is that it is the real deal. Scorsese, Bob (De Niro) and I were in that place at that time."

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“Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.” - Andy Warhol

"Harry Lee, a part-time security guard and taxi driver wants nothing to do with the fast-paced, status-driven society that has left him behind so he sets off for his idea of paradise, the Western Australian city of Perth. His attempt to migrate is complicated when he takes on a job ferrying prostitutes. The situation becomes increasingly volatile when he takes an unhealthy interest in one Vietnamese prostitute, which awakens within him a dark and dangerous attempt at personal redemption."

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment has announced a collector's edition of Taxi Driver which stars Robert DeNiro, Jodie Foster, Cybill Shepherd, and Harvey Keitel. This two-disc limited edition will be available to own from the 14th August, and should retail at around $24.96. The disc will include a newly remastered 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen presentation, along with an English Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround track. Extras will include a video introduction by Martin Scorsese, an audio commentary by Writer Paul Schrader, a second commentary by Professor Robert Kolker, a Producing Taxi Driver featurette, a Martin Scorsese on Taxi Driver featurette, a Martin Scorsese Tribute featurette, and a Making Taxi Driver, God’s Lonely Man documentary.

I've been waiting for this for quite a while. Too bad it doesn't include the Scorsese/Schrader commentary from the Criterion laserdisc.

The commentaries here are some of the better we've seen on a disc in quite some time, and with a film this rich in substance and subtext, there's quite a lot to discuss. Schrader tackles the movie from a more structural and behind-the-scenes perspective, sharing old stories of the film's production as well as discussing the film as a complex narrative -- pointing out motivations, flaws, inspirations, inaccuracies, etc. He does so with candor and charm and makes for a great listen, whereas Kolker approaches the film as a critic and film historian, digging deeper than even Schrader likely did in writing the film to mine the movie for metaphor. Kolker discusses not only the themes of the story and how they are translated visually, but also examines the direction of the film, the camerawork and the acting for insights into how Taxi Driver relates to the human experience on a much deeper level. This is, perhaps, the most interesting -- if slightly more snobbish and arguable -- of the two tracks.

A 15-minute conversation with director Scorsese serves as a kind of visual, mini-commentary, and he does a good job in a short span of time discussing not only the film in general, but the challenges inherent to making it work and even getting the film made in the first place. His respect for Schrader and DeNiro is incredibly evident, and it's an all too brief glimpse at a legendary director and his most laudable work. This piece is bookended nicely with the "Producing" featurette -- a 10-minute chat with producer Michael Phillips who provides some insight onto the challenges of getting a film this bleak greenlit in the mid-1970's.

"God's Lonely Man" is, in a way, a shorter rehash of both two-hour commentaries in a single featurette. Both Schrader and Kolker focus on the film's theme of isolation, Kolker finding it within the film and Schrader highlighting how the film was written in a post-divorce state of loneliness in New York. "Influence and Appreciation" highlights a number of actors and filmmakers recounting their experiences with Scorsese while discussing the breadth of his work, as well as the director as a person. Participants include De Niro, Schrader, Kolker, Michael Phillips and even director Oliver Stone.

"Taxi Driver Stories" is fairly self-explanatory and actually serves as one of the more amusing -- and occasionally moving -- featurettes on the disc. A real-life "Taxi Cab Confessions," this collection presents a group of 1970's taxi drivers gathered together to tell stories about their experiences, as well as to shed some insight into the complex system of the New York taxi service. Meanwhile, the following two "Travis' New York" featurettes highlight the incredible differences between the Manhattan of 1976 and the Manhattan of today in both video and pictures with several notable New York officials -- including Ed Koch -- talking about New York then and now. The change, of course, is stunning.

Finally, the hour-long making-of featurette goes into much more detail about the minutiae of making the movie than most making-of featurettes do. It starts out with recent interviews with the cast (the whole cast) and Scorsese and Schrader, and then moves on to things like the special effects in the shootout at the end, Herrmann's score, and the way the movie was received by audiences. There's a ton of content in this hour-long documentary, which is well worth your time to give it a viewing.

Overall, the amount of insightful, fascinating, worthwhile content on this disc is staggering. A "must buy" if only for the extras alone.

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“Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.” - Andy Warhol

Someone working for the Copenhagen film magazine Ekko allegedly reported today -- get this -- that Martin Scorsese is open to the idea of remaking Taxi Driver with Lars von Trier as some kind of creative partner. Or vice versa.

Can't be real. Has to be bullshit.

The report, allegedly emanating from the Berlin Film Festival, says Scorcese and von Trier are in attendance, and that the two men had discussed the possibility of a remake. And it gets more twisted. The Ekko story allegedly says that Robert De Niro would again play the title role -- presumably a reference to Travis Bickle.

In an initial reaction, von Trier's Zentropa producing partner Peter Aalbek said he could "neither confirm nor deny," but that an official announcement would be made soon.

The 67 year-old Scorcese is in Berlin for the world premiere of his new psychothriller, Shutter Island. I don't know what von Trier is doing there, if he's there at all. This whole thing could be a total figment of someone's imagination. It's such a repulsive idea, it's embarassing to even float it as a joke.

I don't know who the hell Jeffrey Wells is, but I'm glad that the idea repulses him. I can tell right now that that's a good sign. Also: most of the people who commented underneath his post. What is with the closed-mindedness? All but a couple of them immediately reject that there could be anything potentially interesting about it.